Subpoena issued in flap over health care website

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, issued a subpoena this week to a former U.S. chief technology officer, compelling him to testify on the operation and security of HealthCare.gov.

Todd Park, who was a top assistant to President Obama during the launch of HealthCare.gov last year, has refused to meet with the oversight subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology committee five times, prompting the subpoena.

Most recently, the White House canceled a briefing with Park scheduled for Sept. 10 after learning he would be speaking on the record.

"The Obama administration has failed to provide this committee with information about the security of the Obamacare website," Smith said in a statement. "The American people deserve to know their personal information on HealthCare.gov is absolutely secure."

The subpoena will force Park to testify on Nov. 19, just four days after the second round of open-enrollment on is set to begin.

Park was tasked to help fix the health care website after its deeply flawed launch last year, though he said he was not familiar with the website's testing or development before Oct. 1.

Smith said that emails obtained by the committee indicate Park might have more knowledge about the website's security development than he has intimated to Congress. Those findings were in a report released by the committee, which sought to contrast Park's statements that he knew nothing about the report with emails that show "what appears to be substantial involvement with the development of the website's privacy and security standards."